"The school board proposal that triggered the walkouts in Jefferson County calls for instructional materials that present positive aspects of the nation and its heritage. It would establish a committee to regularly review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights" and don't "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.""
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/denver-students-walk-out_n_5871224.html
If history is well taught, it provides all the facts, it describes the way people at the time thought from different perspectives, it has theories about what forces are in motion, but it isn't retroactively judgmental. If you impose current notions of morality onto the past, you won't end up understanding it. You'll only see what you wish to be outraged by.
Nor is history a patriotic course of study. If it serves the purpose of nation building, it loses its useful purpose of objective analysis from different viewpoints. For instance, it is fairly silly to impose a positive view of free markets on a study of history. History looks at such things dispassionately.
The point is first to seek understanding of the past. Not to mine the past for current political purposes. It allows you to stand in other people's shoes.
Only once you have a historical understanding is it worth employing it for political purposes. But that isn't history. It's politics.
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